2/24/2009		Family Business Owners to Hear Howdy Holmes on Leadership
2/24/2009		Elizabethtown College Named to Presidential Honor Roll
2/24/2009		Elizabethtown College Launches Mobile Science Program
2/24/2009		"Crisis of Conscience: The Shenandoah Anabaptists During the Civil War"
2/22/2009		SIFE’s Scouting University Offers More than Merit Badges
2/22/2009		Students Lend A Hand to Hurricane Victims
2/4/2009		Flutefest at Elizabethtown College
2/4/2009		Elizabethtown College Presents “The Tempest”
2/4/2009		Amish Book Discussion at Elizabethtown College
2/2/2009		“A World in Pain” a lecture by Joshua Casteel, 2009 Alumni Peace Fellow

 “Don’t Make Business Decisions with Your Heart or
Family Decisions with Your Head”

By Howdy Holmes

March 12, 2009

8:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Myer Hall

Open free to members of the public involved in a family business – limited seats available.

RSVP to 717-361-3752 by March 2, 2009.

After successfully competing in the world of motor sports for 20 years, Howdy Holmes returned to the family business in November of 1987.  As a racecar driver, Holmes won championships, was named “Rookie of the Year” at the Indy 500 in 1979 and competed in six Indy 500 events, compiling the best average finishing record of any Indy 500 driver who started in more than four events.

Upon returning to “JIFFY” in 1987, Mr. Holmes led a transformation of the then 100 year old family business.  With the help of others, a professionally managed strategic vision was successfully introduced.  Today, known for their Quality and Value, “JIFFY” Mixes is uniquely positioned for the 21st Century. “JIFFY” is the market-share leader in retail prepared baking mixes.  Chelsea Milling is a privately held family-owned business.
 
Howdy Holmes discusses how the old model of leadership, based on authority and position, no longer works in today’s business climate.  Through stories of his own return to the family business, Mr. Holmes describes his concept of “Servant Leadership” and how families often make this difficult.  The tendency to keep the peace and failure to tell the truth sometimes pushes things over the top.   In addition to leadership, Mr. Holmes will touch upon succession and governance in the family business and advises, “You can’t think your way into acting; you have to act your way into thinking.”
  

The S. Dale High Center for Family Business at Elizabethtown College and its Corporate Partners — Barley Snyder, Fulton Bank, Glatfelter Insurance Group, The High Companies, MANTEC, Inc. and McKonly & Asbury — help family businesses “Prepare for Tomorrow” by providing opportunities to address and resolve their succession, management, ownership and strategic issues through a special program of seminars, access to national resources and networking. 

The Corporation for National and Community Service honored Elizabethtown College this month with a place on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to America’s communities.   

Elizabethtown College President Dr. Ted Long said, “Elizabethtown’s mission is centered on delivering an education for service in the largest sense, and this recognition confirms once more that this campus is actively engaged in building a better community around us.  We are honored to be recognized in this way.”

Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award were chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovation of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

Nancy Valkenburg, the director of service learning and civic programs at Elizabethtown College said, “It is an honor to be selected, for the third consecutive year, to the Honor Roll. The Elizabethtown College community lives our College motto of ‘Educate for Service.’  Every year our programs strengthen and expand to include more service to those in need locally, nationally and internationally. The College participates in both large immersion events such as ‘Into the Streets’ and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service as well as on a daily basis with community service work study, academic placements and volunteering in area schools and with nonprofit agencies.  Elizabethtown students tutor and mentor children and adults regionally from Lancaster to Harrisburg.  Many students also participate in alternative fall and spring breaks.  Recent projects included helping to rebuild homes damaged by hurricanes and floods in Mississippi and Texas, trips to Indian reservations in New Mexico to make repairs to the homes of elderly and disabled residents, and service-learning trips with faculty to Mexico, Ireland, China, Thailand, Vietnam and Africa.”

Elizabethtown College has also been chosen as an AmeriCorps campus and currently has five AmeriCorps Scholars in Service to Pennsylvania participating in service projects. Our faculty and staff are very supportive of service to the community and work alongside their students. Elizabethtown College has recently been selected to appear in Beyond the Books: Guide to Service-Learning Colleges and Universities.”

“In this time of economic distress, we need volunteers more than ever. College students represent an enormous pool of idealism and energy to help tackle some of our toughest challenges,” said Stephen Goldsmith, vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the Honor Roll. “We salute Elizabethtown College for making community service a campus priority, and thank the millions of college students who are helping to renew America through service to others.”

Overall, the Corporation honored six schools with Presidential Awards. In addition, 83 were named as Honor Roll with Distinction members and 546 schools as Honor Roll members.  In total, 635 schools were recognized. A full list is available at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.

The Honor Roll is a program of the Corporation, in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation. The President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll is presented during the annual conference of the American Council on Education. 

“I offer heartfelt congratulations to those institutions named to the 2008 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. College and university students across the country are making a difference in the lives of others every day – as are the institutions that encourage their students to serve others,” said American Council on Education President Molly Corbett Broad.

Recent studies have underlined the importance of service-learning and volunteering to college students. In 2006, 2.8 million college students gave more than 297 million hours of volunteer service, according to the Corporation’s Volunteering in America 2007 study. Expanding campus incentives for service is part of a larger initiative to spur higher levels of volunteering by America’s college students. The Corporation is working with a coalition of federal agencies, higher education and student associations, and nonprofit organizations to achieve this goal.

State Grant through SIM Program  – Legislators and Educators Partner

On Thursday, March 12^th, legislators, local school leaders and college administrators came together on the Elizabethtown campus to launch the new Science in Motion program. Attending for the State Department of Education was Ms. Patti Vathis, who was instrumental in administering the program to include Elizabethtown College and representatives of Senators Folmer and Smucker. Also attending the launch were representatives of Elizabethtown, Pottsville and Lancaster school districts. Dr. Ted Long welcomed guests, which included students from Elizabethtown High School. The high school students performed experiments (extracting DNA from a strawberry) for the crowd using some high-tech equipment that is part of the program.

The Science in Motion program is funded through a state grant created by state legislators and awarded by the Department of Education. The Elizabethtown College Science in Motion vehicle will travel throughout Lancaster, Lebanon, Schuylkill and Berks counties, providing science-related professional development and state-of-the-art science equipment to high schools in districts unlikely to afford such costly equipment and professional development for their faculty.

President Long presented the keys to the new 2008 fuel-efficient Honda Element, to Dr. Marla Jones, who is the Director and Mobile Educator of the Science in Motion program and who will be transporting sophisticated science equipment to participating schools, providing professional development to the high school teachers and working with students in the five school districts initially involved in the program.

On Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 7:00 p.m., The Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College will host Emmert F. Bittinger, Ph.D., a passionate scholar of and prodigious writer on Brethren history. During the Civil War, Brethren and Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley, the "breadbasket of the Confederacy," faced a severe crisis. They were under great pressure to support the war not only with supplies and goods, but also with manpower. How these families met this challenge to their religious convictions and personal safety is the focus of this talk.  
Bittinger is a professor emeritus of Bridgewater College and editor of the six-volume series Unionists and the Civil War Experience in the Shenandoah Valley. He has authored books on Brethren history, and articles on family history and a wide variety of other topics. A graduate of Bridgewater College, Bethany Theological Seminary, and the University of Maryland, Bittinger and his wife, Esther, reside in Bridgewater, Virginia. A reception for Bittinger will follow the lecture.

Named for Galen S. Young, D.O., and Jessie M. Young, the Young Center is an integral part of the academic life at Elizabethtown College. Its mission is to foster and promote the scholarly study of Anabaptist and Pietist groups. Scholarly and interpretive investigations of the life, culture and beliefs of Anabaptist and Pietist movements, primarily in their North American context, are conducted by visiting scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate students under the Center's auspices. In addition, the Center interprets the cultural and religious heritage of Anabaptist and Pietist communities to the general public and serves as a clearinghouse for information through a variety of programs. These programs include undergraduate and public lectures, colloquia, seminars, exhibits, concerts, and study conferences.

Interesting parallels and serendipitous connections mark the partnership between Jordan Ridge and Samantha Sibley, co-leaders of this year’s SIFE Scouting University. The sophomore international business majors – along with the rest of the organization’s members and a remarkable number of volunteers – coordinated the largest scouting event in SIFE’s history on Jan. 31. The day-long conference not only offered the 525 youthful participants an opportunity to earn a couple of merit badges, it also gave many of them an important first glimpse into college life.

The connections between Ridge and Sibley began even before they applied to Elizabethtown College. Early in Ridge’s college search, Elizabethtown’s Educate for Service motto caught her attention. She made her final decision to choose E-town because of our International Business (IB) Program. On the other hand, Samantha initially was interested in the College for the IB Program, but her mind was made up because of our service focus.

Before deciding on Elizabethtown, the two sophomores enjoyed separate meetings with Jill Hugus ’08. Hugus was Sibley’s tour guide; Ridge stayed with Hugus on an overnight. Through their contact with the Class of 2008 alumna, the young women learned about Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) and the organization’s motto, “A mind for business, a heart for the world.”

Ridge was so impressed she got involved with SIFE even before graduating from high school. Sibley participated in a similar organization in high school, and tucked the knowledge of the organization in the back of her mind. During Sibley’s first year at the College, she was reminded of the organization by a hall mate, who just happened to be Ridge. The pair’s friendship and involvement in SIFE has grown ever since.

Now in its sixth year, Scouting University provides an opportunity for Boy and Girl Scouts to earn two merit badges – with more than 70 to choose from – in a single day. This year, about 50 faculty, staff, students and community members taught sessions for a record-size group of Scouts from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and West Virginia.

According to Ridge, the benefit of this program is much more than just a couple of merit badges. “We promoted not only involvement in scouting, but also in higher education,” she says, pointing to statistics that show that teenagers who spend time on college campuses are more likely to consider furthering their education beyond high school.

Enrollment at this year’s event was up 40 percent from last year. The co-leaders attribute this success to eight months of extensive planning and the assistance they received from others. Ridge shares, “We tried to think of everything that could go wrong and plan for it, so we were prepared. We also consulted those who came before us.” Some of their predecessors served on SIFE’s Executive Board. Of the group, Sibley says, “Our Executive Board was one of the most experienced SIFE’s ever had.”

The Executive Board includes former scouts and seniors Alaina DeToma and Jon Lewis, who served as Head Girl and Boy Scout Counselor. SIFE President Matt Miller ’09 and Director of Marketing Steve Vernaci ’09 created Scouting University’s inaugural online registration. First-year SIFE member Matt Matyas served while he learned, preparing to lead this effort as all other SIFE members previously involved will either be studying abroad or have graduated next year.

by Audra Farren '09

About the photograph: Shown above are the Scouting University coordinators from the past six years, including (front row, l – r) Jordan Ridge ’11, Samantha Sibley ’11, Amy Smith ’10, (back row, l – r) Jonathan Schultz ’06, Jonathan Lewis ’09 and Benjamin Osterhout ’05. Osterhout ’05 is a member of SIFE’s Business Advisory Board and helped create and coordinate Scouting University in its inaugural year in 2004.

While many Elizabethtown students spent the final week of winter break enjoying friends and packing to head back to school, one group of Elizabethtown students dedicated the time to helping others rebuild their lives. In partnership with the disaster response missions organization Lend A Hand, a group of 34 students, staff and local community members – shown in the photograph below – traveled to Texas to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Rita, which caused $11.3 billion in damage on the Gulf Coast in September 2005.

According to Director of Civic Engagement Nancy Valkenburg ’71, the Elizabethtown group quickly made an emotional connection with those they’d be helping in Port Arthur, Texas. The homeowners shared courageous stories of their experiences with Hurricanes Rita, Wilma and Ike. “From our very first day, we considered ourselves blessed not to have gone through such frightening experiences, and we were even more inspired by all who had to go through so much,” says Valkenburg.

Junior Matt Torresani says the group not only learned a variety of skills in manual labor – such as demolition, carpentry and roofing – but they also had the opportunity to learn about themselves. “We seldom take time to think about the roof over our heads, but the little old lady in Port Arthur, Texas, will never forget the people who fixed the roof that had plagued her home for years,” says Torresani. “This trip gave me a new perspective on being thankful for all that the things I have.”

First-year student Heather Slifko got a chance to work on her Spanish skills with one of the homeowners the group assisted. “She spoke only broken English, but she was always glad to carry on conversation about her family, her faith and her experiences,” Slifko reflects. “What stands out most from my talks with Mrs. Perez was her sincere and overflowing gratitude for our help. One gesture that can be understood in every language is a hug, and Mrs. Perez always had enough to go around.”

Leaving behind them a new roof, kitchen and other improvements, the group certainly made a positive impact on the Port Arthur community. More importantly, though, than the home improvements, Valkenburg believes that the goodwill they shared will make a lasting impression on those they helped. “The students of Elizabethtown College provided fellow volunteers and our new lifelong friends in Texas an insight into the quality of our youth today and a new hope for the future.”

Elizabethtown College Group

Students

Stephanie Carroll ’11

Ginger Fleegal ’09

Jessica Hargest ’09, along with her sister, Lisa Hargest

Amy Haun ’11

Valarie Hetzler ’12

Ryan Kasyan ’09

Lorin Mellinger ’12

Stephanie Patterson ’11

Alexandria Reardon ’11

Logan Reis ’11

Heather Slifko ’12

Matthew Torresani ’10

Michael White ’11

Staff Members

Sharon Sherick, along with her daughter, Morganrae Sherick

Nancy Valkenburg ’71

Community Member

Nathan Blass, a student from Shippensburg University


by Rachel Rohland ’09

The Theatre and Dance Division of Elizabethtown College’s Fine and Performing Arts Department will present Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” for its spring 2009 production. The play – which opens Thursday, Feb. 12 – will be performed in Tempest Theatre in Baugher Student Center. For more information, please call 717-361-1212.

Shakespeare’s magical last play, “The Tempest,” combines love, tragedy and comedy in equal measure. It is set on the enchanted Caribbean island to which usurped Duke Prospero has lured his pirate enemies. While the Duke is planning his revenge, his daughter falls in love with a pirate’s son, and three buffoons hatch a murderous plot. Tempest Theatre is the ideal place for this dramatic storm of elements and compelling emotions.

Performances of “The Tempest” are slated for Feb. 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, and 21 at 8 p.m. Tickets for the production are now available and can be purchased for $5 by calling Elizabethtown College’s Theatre Box Office at 717-361-1170 or sending a request via e-mail to boxoffice@etown.edu.

“The Tempest” is being directed by Michael Swanson, who is associate professor of theatre and coordinator of theatre and dance at Elizabethtown College. The cast includes Duke Prospero, played by Samuel Gillam of Glen Burnie, Md.; his daughter Miranda, played by Emily Knitter of Selinsgrove, Pa.; the air-spirit Ariel, played by Emily Grove of Harrisburg, Pa.; the pirate’s son Ferdinand, played by Ian Pape of Columbia, Pa.; the councilor Gonzala, played by Rachel Witkovsky of Huntingdon, Pa.; the usurper Antonia, played by Natasha Threatts of Camden Wyoming, Del.; King Alonso, played by Michael Fleming of Ewing, N.J.; his sister Sebastia, played by Laura Abernethy of Washington, D.C.; the savage Caliban, played by Graham Stokes of Exeter, R.I.; the jester Trincula, played by Angela Wright of Baltimore, Md.; and the butler Stephano, played by DJ Littell of Landisville, Pa.

Also included in the cast are the ship’s master, played by Douglas Wilson of Elysburg, Pa.; the ship’s boatswain, played by Suzanne Harris of Furlong, Pa.; noblewomen Adrianne and Francesca, played by Rachel Saul of Warminster, Pa., and Leighanne Spitzer of Falls Village, Conn. The goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno are played by Nicole St. Pierre of New Berlin, N.Y.; Pauline Jarvie of Mendon, N.Y.; and Chloe Beveridge of Centereach, N.Y. The mariners (later spirits, nymphs and reapers) are played by Danielle Fishman of Reading, Pa.; Michelle Hare of Harrisburg, Pa.; Jackie Light of Leesport, Pa.; and Laura Robbins of Muncy, Pa.

The assistant director and dramaturg is Sarah Rich of Denville, N.J. The stage manager is Stephany Schultz, with assistant stage managers Shannon Brown and Beth Lewis of Lititz, Pa.

Tom Hackman, assistant professor of theatre at Elizabethtown College, oversees scenic design, lighting and sound for “The Tempest.” Costumes are designed by Shannon Bowman. Professor of Music James Haines is the composer of the play’s music.